Dear Ramji & Sundari,
I feel the urge to write honestly to the Self, so here it is. After 5 years of Vedanta, I find myself still working on tamas & rajas. Rojaguna is strong, but it is still not pure rajas, it is always in combination with old bad habits, like smoking weed, and making music with mostly tamasic/rajasic people.
On the other side I am much in solitude most of the week, and after these Vedanta years, bad habits have become very small. I am sinning intelligently. I train hard, make yoga nidra, read scriptures, and much of the day Ramji is talking in my homeplace.
Still, the jiva is always on karma yoga, but out of desperation, it is still worrying and having fears from time to time. Existential fear arises strongly because of not moving forward, being unhappy with the circumstances and so on. Never in my life before was I confronted with total insecurity, knowing there is not such an object as security. Only in the Self am secure.
I don’t know why sometimes there are long periods of total peace and happiness but when special triggers come along, all the old mithya shit comes up and disturbs the sadhana. On-off. On-off. There is no feeling that something is wrong, but the jiva is still sometimes so busy with likes and dislikes.
But Vedanta also helped me to get strong in a lot of new vasanas. I train hard on my body, lost 12 Kilo weight, my eating habits are very pure and sattvic, my handling of money has also become karma yoga.
So there are two jivas here now somehow, one new jiva is strong, the other old jiva is weak, addictive, full of fear and desires and I am the Self observing that drama.
This body is getting older, and new fears arising sometimes, like how will I die, alone or not, and so on. I didn’t know this kind of tamasic, depressive thoughts when I was younger.
So that’s my update, still a beginner, with the “how to unlock karma yoga” koan.
With the chanting of the saadasiva mantra all day, my karma yoga blossoms. Whenever a like or a dislike comes, I chant the mantra.
Speaking as a jiva, I really want to get free of vaporizing nicotine (electric cigarette) and weed. Weed has become very small, only twice a week or so. But the electric cigarette is a huge tamasic vasana, and I haven’t touch it all these years out of fear of falling again.
So please bless me, on Monday I stand up to fight that deep old vasana and start to root out the addiction in the subtle body. Ishvara is waiting for it. How to be in truth, if the jiva is still tortured by addiction vasanas? Ishvara wants me to give up that one. Maybe I am wrong, but I feel, addiction is blocking Karma Yoga.
Much Love, in Honesty and no Secrets, Henry.
Dear Henry,
Lovely to hear from you! Great progress report. I missed you in Berlin. Here’s the teaching.
First, knowledge yoga. Think carefully about this. You experience two selves, one positive, disciplined, and happy, the other weak, negative and worried. So, neither of them are the real you, existence shining as blissful awareness, because they are objects known to you. You know this.
You only have a problem with one of those “selves.” The other one is OK. You want the negative self to go away. But it can’t go away because it is produced by the desire to have only a positive confident self. So, the problem is wanting life to be different from what it is. But life can’t be different. It is always the same. It swings from positive to negative and back, over and over.
Now karma yoga. Karma yoga is the knowledge that you don’t have control of the results of your actions. You think positive thoughts and you have positive experiences. You think negative thoughts and you have negative experiences. You can’t control the mind because there are too many unknown factors influencing it. The Gita gives the solution in the karma yoga section. It says there are three states of duality: light medium and heavy. (sattva, rajas and tamas), and gives three examples: a fire hidden by smoke, dust on a mirror, and a fetus in a womb. It says you needn’t do anything about the fire hidden by smoke because the next small wind will blow the smoke away and reveal the fire. There are many examples of this kind of desire every day.
It says you can’t do anything about the fetus in the womb. It comes out when it is ready to come out, so there is no sense worrying about it because it is out of your control. When it comes is up to God. So, the solution for you concerning the nicotine and dope is to quit wanting them to go. You’ve done all you can do, and you’ve made great progress. Keep up your discipline and when the desire to smoke comes up have a nice smoke and be ready to act out the next desire.
This illustrates the dust on a mirror example. A few years back you were hanging out with a crowd of lazy, stoned hippies listening to Ganga Mira, who is just a typical lazy stoned guru, give you bad reasons for being a lazy, stoned, hippie. Now you are a together person living a good life. So, you have cleaned the mirror. But you must keep cleaning it because new dust settles on it. If you don’t do your sadhana you will fall back to lazy, stoned hippie self. See the duality here. If you think you were that old self, then you have to think you are the new self. How absurd is that. If you think “I am the Self,” which you know you are, the problem is solved because there is only one you.
Back to Life
So, the problem is expecting life to be different. If it could be different, it would be different. If Henry could be different, he would be different, but Henry is just Isvara, the three energies of life. That guy is not you, the unchanging knower. This is why Vedanta says that you are “beyond” the individual (jiva) and the total (Isvara).
It is a fact that these three kinds of desire are with us from the day we are born to the day we die and when those three energies are packed in a human body they are given a name to make it easy to identify them. That is all. This is where karma yoga becomes jnana yoga. If you want to be free of these two selves, you need to dismiss the desire to have what can’t be different be different, with reference to the facts that I have outlined here. That shouldn’t be hard. You let all kinds of other thoughts pass through your mind every day, Why not let this troubling thought go away? When it comes up, sweep it away. That’s all. You can do both karma yoga and jnana yoga. Yes they are different but they are also the same. Quit worrying!
Much love,
James